Zelda Fichandler

Zelda Fichandler was the Founding Director of Arena Stage in Washington, D.C. and its primary artistic force from 1950-1990. Her history-making example, force of personality, and eloquence as a speaker and writer have made her a leading national figure in the performing arts and Arena Stage a model for scores of cultural institutions established around the country. Zelda's personal vision for theatre has had a transforming effect on the entire field, switching the axis from Broadway to the rest of the nation in the production of new work. She is considered a parent of the regional theatre in America.

Zelda embraced a vast sweep of dramatic literature which reverberated through the commercial and non-commercial theatre world and into film and television. She directed many of Arena's productions including Mrs. Klein, Uncle Vanya, The Three Sisters, Death of a Salesman, An Enemy of the People, Six Characters in Search of an Author, and A Doll House; and the American premieres of new Eastern European works, Duck Hunting, The Ascent of Mt. Fuji, and Screenplay. Arena Stage was the first American theatre company, sponsored by the State Department, to tour the then-Soviet Union. Her Inherit the Wind played in Moscow and St. Petersburg in 1973, the company performed her After the Fall at the 1980 Hong Kong Arts Festival, and in 1987, her production of The Crucible appeared at the Israel Festival in Jerusalem. As a producer, Zelda nurtured all of Arena's plays, making a home for important European playwrights like Brecht, Frisch, Ionesco, Mrozek, and Orkeny, alongside significant American revivals of works by Albee, Miller, Williams, O'Neill, Thornton Wilder, Kaufman and Hart and classics by Shakespeare, Shaw, Moliere, Ibsen, and others. Broadway, too, has felt the impact of Zelda's work, especially with the development of new plays. The Great White Hope, Indians, Moonchildren, Pueblo, A History of the American Film, The Madness of God, Raisin, and K2 all started at Arena Stage. She left the artistic leadership of Arena in 1991 to her close associate, Douglas C. Wager. Zelda also made Arena the theatre of the "second chance," where plays like Summer of the 17th Doll, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, and The Comedians found life after commercial failure in New York.

...